On top of providing high-quality care to patients, there are many considerations at play for practitioners when it comes to running a successful practice. Ensuring patients have a safe and convenient source for supplements is one of the most important. But is owning a supplement store profitable?
Running your own supplement store gives you control over what the patient is taking, help to overcome this, can attract more patients to your clinic, and improves your clinic’s profitability. However, there are a few challenges with the traditional model.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the challenges related to running supplement businesses as well as an easy way to overcome these barriers by using Fullscript for selling supplements online.
3 Potential barriers to running a supplement store
1. Administrative burden
The average supplement store may have dedicated staff members hired to oversee inventory. On top of paperwork, this can involve ordering, restocking, and checking for expired products.
However, often in a clinical setting, these responsibilities fall on the administrative staff. This can take up a good portion of their time, meaning less spent helping your patients, booking appointments, and other vital tasks.
2. Inventory management costs
You’ll have to spend money before your own supplement business turns a profit. In addition to ongoing expenses like website hosting, payment processing fees, and customer service, you may potentially have thousands of dollars in inventory to oversee.
Not only can this be a financial burden just on its own, but you must also consider the cost of potential spoilage in addition to refrigeration needs for certain kinds of supplements.
3. Supplier relations
Ensuring you have good relationships with your supplement suppliers is critical to maintaining your business. However, developing these relations can take up a lot of your time and can sometimes involve complicated contractual and legal negotiations.
How to successfully run your own dietary supplement store
It’s safe to say that running a physical supplement store or selling supplements online is not an easy endeavor. This may have you wondering how you can ensure your patients have access to high-quality supplements without adding additional time and costs to your plate.
Good news! There’s already a digital health platform out there that makes selling supplements a simple and profitable endeavor — Fullscript. More specifically, Fullscript makes it easy for you to prescribe, dispense, and manage healthcare’s best dietary supplements, all in one place.
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A 3 step look at how a Fullscript online supplement store works
1. Customize your pricing
On Fullscript, selling dietary supplements through an online store starts with pricing. You’re empowered to choose your own profit margin to help you grow your practice, offer deep discounts, or strike a comfortable balance of both.
It’s important to note that the maximum discount or profit margin available is 35% for US dispensaries and 25% for Canadian dispensaries. You can learn more about this here.
Tip! If you aren’t looking to make a profit, your store can remain as No-profit. This is the default when signing up unless additional information and acceptance to terms take place.
2. Send online supplement recommendations
Once your account is set up, you can begin to send online supplement recommendations to your patients. We arm you with the tools to craft online treatment plans that include your personalized instructions, supplements, and wellness products, as well as educational resources.
Patients can purchase products directly from the treatment plan, and have their orders delivered right to their door. Meanwhile, you can watch profit climb as your patients order high-quality products and receive automated reminders that encourage refills again and again.
Did you know? Seventy-nine percent of patients prefer to order refills online, with 32% of Fullscript patients placing 7+ refill orders.
3. Receive automatic payouts
Payouts are only available if you opt in to make a profit from patient orders. As orders ship, earnings accrue and are triggered as a lump sum payout to your business bank account every 30 days (default payout schedule).
For more information about how payouts are deposited, check out this support article.
Tips for optimizing your online supplement store
To ensure your store performs at the optimal level for your practice, consider implementing the following suggestions.
1. Update your patient list
The more patients uploaded to your Fullscript store means the more patients have access to a safe and convenient source for their supplements. Follow these simple steps to upload new patients and keep your list up-to-date.
2. Switch to a full product catalog
Catalog permissions are set at the dispensary level and dictate what level of access patients have to your Fullscript catalog. Switching to a full product catalog gives your patients access to the entire Fullscript catalog, including general wellness and personal care products. Learn more about changing your catalog permissions.
3. Utilize shareable wellness protocols
Build your own protocols or upload Fullscript-curated protocols for your patients to browse and order from confidently. You’ll give your patients access to high-quality supplements without a prescription or appointment, and you’ll give yourself an easy way to grow your practice that supports one-to-many care.
The bottom line
Is owning a supplement store profitable on Fullscript? Ultimately, using Fullscript to offer your patients an easy way to source their own supplements means you can add an additional revenue stream to your practice and spend less time managing your business and more time treating patients.
Instead of starting your own online store, leveraging Fullscript also enables you to prescribe, dispense, and manage healthcare’s best dietary supplements, all in one place. Or, as Fullscript practitioner Dr. Ronald Hoffman, MD, puts it:
“Fullscript is a logical alternative to laborious stocking, fulfilling, and shipping the many diverse products I recommend. Since adopting Fullscript, I have expanded my capability to offer a far greater range of innovative supplements. Fullscript also enables me to better track patient compliance, and make midcourse corrections with personalized instructions at the stroke of a key—24/7, from wherever I happen to be!”
Add a robust, free revenue stream by dispensing supplements on Fullscript
Get started